It's about near to impossible to find a decent government in the Middle East, so it's not entirely astonishing to find a plethora of lousy policies.

Despite that, the authoritarian regimes of the area have an impressive record
in staying in power. They ARE able to remember that regimes based on repression are best served, in times of vocal public demonstrations of dissatisfaction by increasing the repression.

As long as the people are fearful and have no hope of things improving...things don't improve.

I doubt that what you call "self-defeating " actions by the Syrian government are being undertaken for any reason other than the government knows that it will not endure through any other course.
They're either gonna kill to retain control or crumble.

Juan 07/13/2011 at 8:56 am
The Fairness Doctrine could work fine. Just offer as many hours of an anti-Hannity as you do of Hannity. And in hard news, try at least to be even-handed.

------The Fairness Doctrine came from a time when there were three nation-wide television networks dominating the airwaves.
The time when it was a good idea has passed (even if it was the lousy Reagan admin that ended it)

Quite obviously, Professor Cole is letting his well-justified aversion to the crap passed out on FOX to cloud his better judgment and take him to places that he doesn't really want to go.

--------------

THOUGHTS ON THE MIDDLE EAST, HISTORY AND RELIGION

COMMENT
RULES

The comment section does not seek any sort of artificial two-sides-of-a-story “balance” at all, and no critiques of lack of such “balance” on these pages will be entertained. This sort of “balance” would require that the allegation that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer be offset with a denial of this simple and well-established fact. This pernicious game played is not played here

Clinton was giving the warmongering Baathist regime any assistance and why do you conclude that she knew that there were no WMD in iraq?
There was no evidence that there were not chemical or biological weapons.

Moi, thank you for the figures and total of "up to 12.3 million" bucks spent over a period of some 4 years. If, to you, that is evidence that the US might have "precipitated the current crisis" by funding a tv station in London and giving money to journalists, then I guess you might think just about anything, including that Radio Free Europe precipitated the destruction of the Soviet Empire.

Perhaps PRESS-TV's English broadcasts will be responsible for the end of NATO.

--"Guards at the French embassy were forced to fire three warning shots as protesters stormed into the compound using a battering ram, according to officials. Three members of the embassy staff, believed to be local employees, were injured."

Calling the shots a war crime is about half past absurd.
You would have to have no inkling of law, war, logic or human interaction to advance such nonsense.

What are you trying to say and how the heck can you possibly think that this is at all akin to the Syrian government shooting citizens peaceably assembled to call for an end to the denial of their rights?

Moi, if you have anything other than extraordinarily far-fetched thoughts that the US
" ... may have precipitated the current crisis."

please share the information. Otherwise, your may questions appear to be simply ludicrous. people don't rise and challenge the guns of a police state in a sustained campaign of protest without some pretty strong and deep motivation.

The United States does not have much of a relationship with the Syrian government, although the Obama administration had some hope for cultivating closer ties with Syria.
However, the idea that Assad was open to moving somewhat toward the West and somewhat away from Iran and Hezbollah, which seemed worth exploring, has been overtaken by events.

It now seems worth exploring whether there's a possibility that the overthrow of the Baathists might lead to a Syrian regime less repressive, somewhat stable and no longer aligned with the Iranians, but instead influenced by Turkey and the other Arab nations.

I agree with your comment and think that many people (some of whom should know better) are so euphoric at seeing the reign of authoritarianism in the Middle East start to come undone that they start believing that the end of it is going to come before the beginning of the end is over.

Of course,just because Justice and Development party is far more socially liberal than is the MB, that shouldn't lead anyone to think of them as anything like what US citizens would consider liberal.

The Turkish party in power are certainly not champions of freedom of speech or of the press and have frequently shown themselves ready, willing and able to intimidate, shut down or jail reporters.

They would certainly find not a damn thing wrong with gathering info to use against a guy like Professor Cole if Cole was a Turkish citizen/blogger critical of their policies. They would probably laugh at our idea that the Bush admin idea of smearing the Professor was violative and deserves to be investigated.

the hijackers were worthless pieces of stuff as is the suggestion that our expenditures should be analyzed as a response to a single event.
there isn't even a unitary purpose behind all that money spent in the last decade. the war in Iraq is surely not like the war in Afghanistan and distinct from our raid and bombings in Pakistan.

I'm less arguing with...you....than with your presumption that things in Libya can only go in one direction from here,

Qaddafi is little different from anybody else in that we're all eventually toasted.

There can be any number of events before eventually, Professor, and Qaddafi should have been toasted 30 years ago and yet ...he's still not done .,,, even though Libya's long-term future was put in doubt by his ascension to power more than 40 years ago.

---I would like to suggest that the citizens of each country are the ones responsible for the content of their government. ---

maybe that's a little too simple. were the citizens of Poland responsible for the installation of the communist regime that followed the collapse of the Nazi governance? were they responsible for their government after the Nazi invasion?

If only the stand that they're making was more closely related to achieving justice or justice could come through lifting constraints placed upon Hamas without extracting any concessions from them, perhaps more folks would agree with you Mr Flint when you say that the US and UK should be ashamed.
Perhaps you might bear in mind that the US and UK have long shouldered most of the burden in supplying the people of Gaza with free food.

Siun is one of the least fair and balanced and reliable people it's ever been my misfortune to find on firedoglake. she personally reduces the quality and reliability of the entire blog.
she's shallow of thought and reprints crap from other unreliable people and repeats it as gospel.
she's a damned poor thing upon which to link.

the use of generic equivalents rather than Viagra might be an infringement against Pfizer. steerpike might have valid concerns and not be too worried about mass rape as much as outraged by drug counterfeiting.

---"I rather fear that many of the same politicians who cast a vote against war on Friday will, if there is a Republican white person in the White House in 2013, gladly turn around and authorize aggressive war on Iran."--

I fear that the "white person" part of the sentence was gratuitous and rather juvenile.

it might well be better for us to leave. might not be better for Iraq. we might have to consider rendering aid if asked by the Iraqi government, even if al Sadr disagrees (and why his opinion counts for anything is a mystery.)

less the threat of Kurdish independence than the threat to Turkish exports eastward and military action with European/US involvement in the area which is likely to disrupt Turkish political aspirations.

---American confidence (or perhaps we should call it what it is, arrogance)----

simplistic (and rather waspish) nomination of what it really is and absolutely inconsistent and shallow coming from someone who champions the UN as the hope of the world and said that it was founded to prevent mass murders.

rather obviously, the UN is a product of that American confidence/arrogance and will be ineffective without it.

Entirely plausible. The VPs office around that time brought pressure to bear against a relative of mine who was then, in a DC-based magazine, writing a column critical of the Iraq war and the government's policies.

Had our raid into Pakistan's territory ended by finding out that bin Laden wasn't taking shelter there, we would certainly owe Pakistan an apology and people in Pakistan would certainly be correct in expressing outrage and feeling insulted.
But that's not what we learned and the Pakistanis should be feeling ashamed and apologetic. Any anger that they have out to be directed at their own government, military and security services.

Islamabad may have powerful interests, but some of them run counter to our own.
Repairing our relationship IS important, but not absolutely important. If Pakistan wants the relationship repaired, it'll be repaired. But we owe them little, certainly less than they owe.

---"What Gates does not understand is that the degree of militarization he is demanding of the Europeans, and which already characterizes the US, is what leads to such ruinous adventures. It is the US that needs to change, not Europe."----

Gates demanded no such thing and he certainly didn't talk about NATO members bankrupting themselves.
This is a very obvious misreading of Gates' speech.
What he DID say is that most NATO members aren't meeting their commitment to spend that whopping 2% of GDP and that they don't co-ordinate enough to spend those small sums wisely and eliminate duplication.

His criticism of the Libya effort, the failure to provide adequate direction and munitions for all the aircraft committed, is also misread in this post.

Gates saying that the US providing 75% of the funding for NATO forces should change and that the Europeans can afford to spend more in support of their own security needs is not a demand that the Europeans bankrupt themselves, merely a reminder that things are quite different from the conditions post-WWII.

wow yourself, supe, I've got to admit that I wasn't as vigilant as I should have been and allowed the Israelis and Pakistanis to develop nukes. After that, I've increased my alert levels and helped to deny them to both the South Africans and the Libyans.

Internal vigilence is the price I pay.

until such time as Israel uses nuclear weapons in a first-strike against Iran, I'm gonna follow the line taken by some folks here, and say that there's absolutely no proof of what you're alleging.

----'The US, Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China issued a joint statement today expressing “deepened concerns” over Iran’s “consistent failure” to comply with UN resolutions about possible military dimensions to its nuclear program. The statement was issued a day after Iran said it would triple production of 20-percent uranium and shift the production from Natanz to the underground bunker of Fardu.'----

this follows the earlier---

IAEA Director Amano General Yukiya Amano, in a statement at the meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors in Vienna on Monday, said that the agency has received “further information related to possible past or current undisclosed nuclear-related activities that seem to point to the existence of possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.”

--- The only way Israel will ever accept a Palestinian state is if it is 100% demilitarized. ----

that's not correct. Israel certainly doesn't want the PA to have a strong military any time soon, but everyone recognizes that the Palestinians have to have enough men under arms to control their territory.

super, if they were so well-informed, why were they organizing Communist and Anarchist political parties?
that's a waste of leisure time that they could have used to alleviate the ignorance that led to forming those parties.

MEH, perhaps you and Dr Cole can agree that our society is pretty good at producing and supporting a fair number of people who have the time to read about Yemen and have the ability to both note and decry the shortfall of our media in failing to focus on substantial stories.

Our society is proficient at producing educators AND entertainers and allowing people to choose whether they wish to learn... or not.